


flowers never bend with the rainfall

by janie_tangerine



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brienne is the Best, Dorks in Love, F/M, Flowers, Gender Role Reversal, Gift Exchange, Inspired By Tumblr, Not A Cersei Friendly Fic As Usual Skip At Will, Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Past Incest, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Valentine's Day, Valentine's Day Fluff, fuck gender roles, past jc with everything it can entail but don't worry this is honestly the fluffiest ever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 18:55:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17772368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: Cersei sneers. “And what, is he such a terribleboyfriendthat you have to buy your own flowers?”Brienne levels at her the most unimpressed stare Jaime has ever seen coming from her, and that’s all, given that he’s been at the receiving end of it more than once.“No,” she says. “Actually, I’d punch right in the face anyone who’d try to buymeflowers.” She takes a couple of steps until she reaches the stairs leading to his door, and Cerseidoesmove out of her way, at least. “However, they’re forhim.”What — she gothimflowers? Before Jaime can process the entire thing, she has handed him the bouquet — jonquils, peonies and lilies, all different shades of yellow, and it’sgorgeous, and — wait. Wait. Didn’t he basically rant at her when being drunk out of his mind last year and somehow let it slip that he hated that not only Cersei never liked his flowers but never reciprocated?And — gods,she actually brought him flowersnow?





	flowers never bend with the rainfall

**Author's Note:**

> ... I'm still not managing to finish everything I *should* be working on, but last week I saw this post on tumblr which I sadly can't find right now whose point was basically that as a society we should just say fuck it and make flower-giving gender neutral/gift men some damned flowers too, once in a while. Never mind that I 100% agree, I went like 'wait that's totally jb fic material', and V-Day was coming up, so... have some extra fluff Valentine's Day fic that was not in plans but should satisfy any fluff need you might have. ;)
> 
> As usual: nothing is mine, the title is from Simon and Garfunkel for variety and say you're welcome to your dentist from me while I saunter vaguely downwards all over again and try to work on stuff I should be finishing /o/

“There you go,” Mr. Harlaw tells Brienne as he hands her the package and her receipt. “If you need to change it, it should be before two weeks but given how good of a customer you are, I think we’ll make an exception.”

Brienne smiles back at the bookshop’s owner — she’s come here for years, since her first year of university when she moved to London, and by now they’re on a first name basis. Then again, she’s bought here all her books since then, fiction and not, and she always liked the place. Mr. Harlaw is around his mid-sixties but looks younger, has a knowledge of literature that always astonishes her and never gave her bad advice, and — maybe she’s also thankful that as inappropriate as his nephew is when he comes in to help a couple days per week, he _did_ give her excellent advice when it came to the not-trashy erotica she used to read when it was just her and her hand in her bed and somehow she needed the extra kick.

But there’s a reason why she doesn’t need that _now_.

“Thank you,” she says, “but I don’t think there’s the need. I mean, I’m sure the person I’m buying it for doesn’t have it.”

_Or better, he used to have it_ , if Tyrion hasn’t lied to her, but she doesn’t think he did, _and now he doesn’t anymore_.

“Hm,” Mr. Harlaw says, finding her a paper bag. “Let me guess, Valentine’s day present?”

She feels heat come up to her face. “What if it is? And how did you guess?”

He raises an eyebrow. “You’ve come here for _years_ and this is the one time I see you grinning like _that_ when buying a book. Same way my nephew does when he gets something for his guy, and he denies it to hell and back, but he does. And I’d say about time — you’re a nice girl, you deserve it.”

“Thank you,” she says, hoping the blush dies down as she looks down at her bag. “It’s just, it’s the first one and I kind of had zero hopes that we’d ever be a _thing_ , and we only got together around Christmas, so… I wanted it to be nice.”

“Well, it’s _out of print_ , if he’s not an idiot he will.”

“Oh, he’s not,” she grins, and waves goodbye to the old man as she leaves the shop.

Gods, Jaime has no idea that she _knows_ about what Tyrion told her, but she doesn’t think he would be angry at him for sharing. She looks at her phone, glancing back at their exchange from this morning.

 

_My place, 8 PM, don’t bring dessert_ , he had texted.

_As long as you don’t have flowers ready ;)_ , she had replied.

_I don’t think I want to risk you dumping me when I spent month trying to get you to put two and two together,_ he had replied, and a moment later, _I didn’t punch that asshole in the face just to be like him now, did I_?

 

The messages are split in four and she can picture him triple checking the autocorrect function before sending them — as if she’d care — and she knows she’s grinning like a madwoman in the middle of the street, but —

_But_ , it’s not like she ever thought she’d get to spend Valentine’s Day _not_ glaring daggers at, well, other attractive people who got to pass the day doing romantic things that no one would ever think of doing with her. And now that not only she’s _not_ for the first time in her life but she also gets to spend it with the only man she’s ever met with whom she _really_ would have wanted to be with, all things considered, and on whom she’s crushed for years by now… she thinks she’s earned the right to smile in the middle of the road. She walks on, thankful that it’s not raining for some kind of miracle, then glances at her clock. It’s six PM, but in order to get to Jaime’s place it’s a metro ride with two changes and it’s rush hour, which means she actually doesn’t have _so much time_ if she wants to not be late. She speeds her pace — there’s a stop five minutes from here, she can take the first train there.

And then she sees the flower shop on the corner.

Any other day, she’d have passed it.

And any other time, she’d have walked faster — she can barely handle the sight of damned roses after Connington humiliated her in public in front of the whole of their uni theater group on the first year, when Jaime still hadn’t joined it, and so she usually doesn’t even look at flowers.

But.

_But_.

There was a conversation they had — not recently, but a year or so ago. It was always around Valentine’s day, but he used to be livid when it rolled around. And she _knew_ about his sister, she’s known since she drove him home when he had drank too much at the post-show party of their university theater group and had been in a rough patch with her and a good part of the story came tumbling out of his mouth, but she never asked for details unless he offered them first. Never mind that she knows _he_ knows there was something extremely wrong about it that was not on _him_ , but that’s between him and his therapist. She won’t ask and he usually doesn’t share too much.

_But_ last year, he asked her if she could come with while he went to a few pubs with the specific target of getting drunk out of his mind after seeing Cersei, and she had gone, figuring someone should have driven him home after. And — he _did_ get drunk, mores than the first time he told her about his sister, before passing out on her sofa when she finally brought him to her place because he couldn’t tell her where his keys had ended up.

He _did_ talk to her.

——

“ _It’s just,” he had said downing half of his whiskey glass, “when we were together, well,_ sort of _, without anyone knowing, obviously, she’d be always disappointed if I didn’t, like, treat her as much as I could get away with. Bringing her out to dinner, bringing her flowers, the likes, except that the flowers were always the wrong type or the wrong color, if I got her jewelry it wasn’t flashy enough, if anyone else in high school asked me out for it even if I said no they’d get their life ruined in the span of five days.”_

_He had shaken his head. “And now that she’s_ engaged _to the man she’s apparently always wanted for years, she just — you were around when she ended it.”_

_Brienne had been. She had said nothing. She remembered even too well that when Cersei got officially engaged to Rhaegar Targaryen he showed up on her door after having obviously cried himself to exhaustion and with a bruise on his face that looked entirely too hand-shaped for her tastes. She hadn’t asked and let him sleep on the sofa for the next week._

_“Well, she hasn’t called or anything in a year or so and yesterday she sends pictures to the bloody family group chat of her engagement rings and then she asks me why I’m not congratulating her in private. Fuck that. As if she’s ever done the reverse.”_

_“What, the reverse?”_

_He had let out a bitter, bitter laugh. “Not like I expected fucking flowers or something, or that she’d cook dinner for me once — she’s terrible, never let her near a kitchen —, but… it was always me doing everything. Since always.” He had made a face at that point. “Shit,” he had said, “I’ve got to throw up,_ shit _—”_

_He had thrown up on her shirt, thankfully it was old and worn out, and at that point he had let her drive him back._

_She hadn’t blamed him for that. Not at all._

_——_

_Not like I expected fucking flowers_ , he had said, sounding… sad. And — it’s not like it’s expected for _men_ to get flowers period, but Brienne's general impression was that Jaime resented both having to keep his relationship hidden for obvious reasons _and_ that she never… well, treated him, for lack of better words.

Gods, you’d think she’d be more freaked out that her boyfriend’s only previous relationship was _his twin sister_ , but — she’s known him years, she’s known Cersei for long enough and she’s talked to his brother long enough to grasp the basics, and if she had been fine with being around him when she learned for the first time that he and his sister _had_ been together and hadn’t altogether broken up (even if honestly, she had grasped that when they were seeing each other, he tended to be more of an ass than usual, and from what she had grasped it wasn’t an equal relationship at all, and she _did_ like him as a friend first and foremost, so she had resolved to stick around until he figured it out), then it wasn’t going to change things, not when he’s actually seeing someone about it and it _shows_.

And — hell, it’s not like Brienne doesn’t get wanting to be treated at least sometimes — relationships should require equal effort. But — in the almost two months they’ve been together, he always looked over the moon regardless of how much he tried to hide it if she was the one proposing to go out, or if she showed up at rehearsals (they never quite left the university theater company even if it’s obviously not their life calling, but it’s a good distraction from grading essays) bringing him a portion of fish and chips because she got it for herself but knows he likes it, too, and he hasn’t shied away once from holding hands in public or kiss her on the subway or doing all those little things the assholes who tried to get into her pants for that bet never quite would do in public with _her_.

And _so what_ if he maybe wants flowers? He’s inviting her to dinner and _he_ is cooking, so he obviously doesn’t mind raising a finger to whatever gender roles have to say when it comes to this kind of thing and for that matter he never did — hell, the year he joined the theater company (her second) they put on _Antigone_ and _he_ ended up cast as the lead because they wanted to switch the genders for the sake of it and he didn’t even blink at it, so it’s no news — and it’s not like he ever tried to give _her_ any, as he so eloquently put it before.

Huh.

Maybe —

Oh, screw it, she thinks, and walks inside the shop. It’s a pricey shop, but what the hell, she can splurge on it for once. She resolutely avoids the roses section lest she ends up feeling like kicking them to the ground and instead talks to the shop assistant for a while, explaining the situation and without being too forthcoming on the gender of her _partner_ lest she has to answer questions she doesn’t care for. She leaves the shop with a medium-sized bouquet of jonquils, primroses and calla lilies, all in yellow, from pale to deep and warm, carefully tied with a golden bow inside green paper.

At this point, she’ll take the bus — on the metro, they’d get smashed. Still, she has a little less than two hours to go, she’ll make it.

She glances at her reflection in the next shop window she passes by — she wore a new blue coat she got for Christmas from her father and low boots, and while she hasn’t bothered with make-up, she _might_ have wasted an hour this morning trying to iron her hair into a slightly curlier shape. She still doesn’t know if she succeeded, but — she looks better than her usual, for what it’s worth.

She breathes out, hurrying to the bus stop.

So what if she’s excited, for once? She thinks they both earned it.

 

***

 

_Well, this is what I get for being paranoid_ , Jaime thinks as he stares at his kitchen and the table outside. Given that you can’t never know what might happen, he started setting the table and slicing vegetables at four-something and now it’s seven-thirty and the table is already set and dinner is finished — he left most of the food inside the pans and in the oven so it doesn’t cool too much, but as it is, he’s pretty much done. He considers texting Brienne, but if she’s with public transport she most likely timed her movements, so she can’t be here sooner as much as he’d like her to. Still, he figures he has time for a shower, and considering that he’s sweated behind that damned shepherd’s pie for half of the afternoon, he most likely needs one. Ten minutes and he’ll be done, he figures, glancing again at his table. He set it with the nice red tablecloth his aunt gave him when he moved out along with a set of porcelain plates and _nice_ golden crystal glasses that he never uses — he straight up always uses hard plastic ones and same for the plates, no point in turning into his father and not drinking from anything that costs less than fifty pounds. He might even have put a couple candles in the middle, feeling ridiculous for a moment, but he _never_ had the chance to do it with Cersei, who thought candlelit dinners were for dumb romance movies, or with _anyone else_ , since she didn’t quite let him or made burned ground around him to the point that at some point no one even dared talk to him outside his swim team mates, so… why the hell not? It’s the first time he actually might get to have a _normal_ Valentine’s Day in his entire life, might as well go all-out on it.

He smiles to himself, thinking that at least he’s not alone when it comes to it, and fuck’s sake, given Brienne’s abysmal experiences with those assholes from both her high school and university who asked her out on a bet more than once and anyone else she’s ever told him about, he _is_ kind of itching to treat her to a nice evening, not when he’s spent months pining after her but figuring that it was a miracle she was even friends with him in the first place, given what kind of fucking baggage he comes with. On one side, at least he doesn’t feel like he might fuck it up, given that neither of them has decent experience when it comes to dates so at most they’ll fuck it up together, on the others… it’s a damned shame that someone as nice and kind and patient as Brienne had the shit luck in men that she had, and she’s entirely too good for him and the amount of baggage he has to deal with no thanks to his father and sister, but — it does seem like she doesn’t care, so he’s going to savor his Valentine’s day evening and take the damned shower, and at that point it won’t be long until she shows up.

He gives the kitchen a last check, makes sure that the chocolate and Guinness cake he baked before hasn’t fallen over itself in the fridge — it _hasn’t_ , good — and takes another deep breath before heading upstairs.

That is, he would have if someone hadn’t rung the doorbell.

Huh. Maybe Brienne is early? At worst he can tell her to wait ten minutes while he does it. He yells that he’s coming, who else can it be even, and opens the door —

And isn’t quick enough to slam it back closed.

Damn it.

“Cersei,” he sighs, staring at his sister. She’s impeccably dressed in white fur, blonde hair falling over it from under an equally white fur cap, her lips curled in a displeased frown, and not for the first time, he wonders _how_ he spent years assuming that they were made for each other when just looking at her now makes him damn uncomfortable. “I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Why, since when do I need to call?” She retorts back, and Jaime wants to ask, _seriously_?

“I figured you would, since _you_ broke things off and all,” he hisses. “And shouldn’t you be with Rhaegar having dinner in some five-star restaurant?”

She rolls his eyes. “He had to _be with the kids_ ,” she snorts. “Custody turns.”

“Oh,” Jaime snorts back, “he has _three_ of them, and he should ditch the turns because of you? Or maybe, since you two are oh, let me remind you, _getting married in six months_ , maybe you could bother to spend some times with those damned kids since you _will_ have to see them around?”

“Nonsense,” Cersei retorts. “I’m not spending the evening with other people’s children until I _have_ to. And he could have left them with that friend of his who always volunteer anyway, but he didn’t, and that’s not the point.”

“Well,” he sighs, “I’m waiting for someone, so if you would be so nice to let me go back upstairs and wash, that’d be great. And with that, I mean, _leave_.”

For a moment, she looks floored, as if she had expected anything but _that_.

Then again… hasn’t he always answered when she called, came when she said she needed him, dropped things midway because he had to see her? Well, not anymore.

“Excuse me?” Cersei asks.

“I’m _waiting for someone_ ,” he says again, and _then_ she notices that he has chocolate under his nails, that his t-shirt smells of onions and that it’s actually covered in gravy stains.

“What madness are you on about?”

He rolls his eyes. “I see that unless Tyrion lied to me about having told the whole lot of you at Christmas dinner that _I have a girlfriend_ , you weren’t listening when _he_ was talking as usual, were you?”

The moment he mentions that, he can see Cersei’s eyes turn into green, angry fire under the light of his porch lamp.

“You have a _what_ ,” she repeats.

“I don’t know, since you have a _fiancé_ , I think I’m allowed some fun myself, or what?”

Cersei keeps on staring at him, as if she can’t just process it.

After enough silence, he shakes his head. “Well, I’m not going to let you in. Are you going to go already or _not_?”

She shakes her head. “Jaime, don’t be like _that_. Why would you waste time with a distraction when —”

“She’s not a distraction. I’m so serious over her I cooked her dinner.”

“ _You_ did? She couldn’t even do it? And you can’t cook anyway!”

“I offered, and it’s not like _you_ ever even made coffee in your life. And no, I _couldn’t_ when I lived in the manor, but I happened to have learned.” _Also because she gave me crash lessons when I pretty much begged her to_.

“You — but you could hire a maid!”

“Oh, and maybe I’ve had enough of people keeping my shit tidy and I want to do it myself. Cersei, honestly, I’m waiting for someone and if you thought I’d mope around waiting for you to give me scraps of your time, you were wrong. You ended it, you treated me like _shit_ , I don’t think I owe you any other information. _Leave_. Yes, there is someone I’d rather spend my night with more than you. You’re getting _married_ , damn it, I’m not going to be that person.”

He tries to shut the door in her face, but she puts a hand on it and of course now he can’t unless he mauls it. Fuck. _Fuck_.

“So,” she says, smirking slightly, “does your _girlfriend_ know about us, or doesn’t she? Because something tells me not many people wouldn’t find such a thing a deal-breaker.”

Jaime is about to ask her if she’s _seriously_ implying that she _would_ put effort into ruining it, but then he realizes that there’s no point. She would. He _knows_ she would. And since she obviously didn’t pay attention when Tyrion was telling _who_ was the girlfriend, maybe he can try to postpone this before she finds out it’s Brienne and gets even angrier —

“Actually, yes,” comes Brienne’s voice from behind them.

Well, _fuck_.

Cersei turns on her heels and so he can see Brienne too — fuck, she came in that coat her father gave her for Christmas which _really fucking suits her_ given that it’s a just slightly lighter shade of blue than her eyes, with which it pairs _really damn well_ , for a moment he notices nothing else.

Then he realizes that she looks at all _not_ impressed and that she has — _flowers_ in her hands? What the hell?

“ _You_?” Cersei spits, as if she can’t believe it.

“Me,” Brienne says, a small smile on her lips. “And I’ve known since long before you got engaged, so if you think showing up and informing me of the ugly backstory will make me run, I haven’t before, I won’t now. So, can I get in? I’m starving.”

Cersei sneers. “And what, is he such a terrible _boyfriend_ that you have to buy your own flowers?”

Brienne levels at her the most unimpressed stare Jaime has ever seen coming from her, and that’s all, given that he’s been at the receiving end of it more than once.

“No,” she says. “Actually, I’d punch right in the face anyone who’d try to buy _me_ flowers.” She takes a couple of steps until she reaches the stairs leading to his door, and Cersei _does_ move out of her way, at least. “However, they’re for _him_.”

What — she got _him_ flowers? Before Jaime can process the entire thing, she has handed him the bouquet — jonquils, peonies and lilies, all different shades of yellow, and it’s _gorgeous_ , and — wait. Wait. Didn’t he basically rant at her when being drunk out of his mind last year and _somehow_ let it slip that he hated that not only Cersei never liked _his_ flowers but never reciprocated?

And — gods, _she actually brought him flowers_ now?

For a moment, he wants to say, _I don’t deserve you_ , but then he decides it’s not the kind of thing he wants to share in front of his damned sister. “You knew, didn’t you,” he whispers, looking at her as she smiles, and now that it’s turned to him it’s softer, not the cold stare she had leveled at his sister. Her cheeks are slightly reddened and she nods as she wraps his hands around the stems of the flowers.

“I heard you last year,” she replies. “I still don’t want any from you, _ever_.”

“Duly noted,” he grins, unable to keep how much he appreciates the gesture from his voice, “but you know, if you want to buy me some more, I’m not going to stop you.” Fuck. _She got him flowers_. When she loathes the damned things and usually runs on the other side of the road if they pass too close to a shop.

“Good to know,” she smiles back, letting the bouquet go completely before looking at Cersei again. “Well,” she says, “we had plans for the night. Care to leave us to it? Because I wasn’t planning on letting anyone else watch.”

Cersei must guess that this is a hopeless fight because her lips go into a thin line and she storms down. “This isn’t over here,” she says, and heads outside.

“It better be, if you want your engagement to last!” Jaime shouts behind her, and then lets Brienne in and immediately slams the door, feeling like he’s fucking freezing, but then again he _did_ stand in the cold for that long, didn’t he?

Anyway, he’ll worry about that later, since he’s still staring at the damned flowers. They really are lovely, he can’t help thinking, and he still can’t get over the fact that _she actually went there_.

“I imagine she showed up to make you miserable?” Brienne asks.

He snorts. “Rhaegar was with the kids and of course she couldn’t bear to spend time around _any_ of them. So of course she comes here.” He shakes his head, running his fingers over one of the primroses. “Shit, they’re lovely,” he says. “You didn’t have to, but —”

“Jaime, did you _want_ some or not?” She half-smiles.

“What if I did?”

“Then there’s no bloody reason why not, but you’re not ever getting roses from me.”

“Don’t worry,” he grins, “I wouldn’t want any. Fuck, I — listen, I’ll just go find these a vase, put on a shirt that doesn’t smell like grease and come back down in a moment, all right?”

“Sure,” she says, “it’s not like I don’t know my way around.”

She sits down, taking off her coat, and he dashes upstairs — there’s a vase large enough for the flowers, thankfully, and he places them inside it carefully before dashing inside the bathroom and filling it up. Then he gives himself the quickest possible watch, throws his shirt on the ground and grabs the first green dress shirt he finds from the wardrobe, retrieves the flowers _and_ her present, which had been in a bag by the stairs, and finally descends. She’s sitting in one of the small armchairs in the entryway, and maybe he smirks when she sees her eyes go wide open as he comes down the stairs, but a man maybe _does_ enjoy it when his girlfriend about gapes at him, right?

He puts the flower on the small table near the chair she’s sitting on. “That’ll do,” he grins, deciding that he _does_ like the look of them. “And I’m really glad you got here earlier or I’d still be here trying to explain Cersei we’re done.”

“Good thing I took the bus. And — oh. Am I smelling shepherd’s pie?”

“Sure you are. And I have that Guinness and chocolate cake you like cooling in the fridge.”

“What, seriously?”

“Hey, do you think baking is beneath me? Anyway, just — no need to stand here.” He glances at how the jeans she’s wearing hug her legs, showing off exactly how muscular they are — fuck, he needs to get his head off the gutter. They’ll have time for that later. He motions for her to follow him to the living room, and he sees her eyes go wide when she notices that he didn’t just go for the candlelit dinner, he actually broke out the good china.

“Oh,” she says, “you did go all-out, didn’t you?”

“You did bring me flowers, didn’t you?” He shrugs, pretty much reveling in how touched she looks, and then.

“I also brought you something else, actually,” she says, and then notices the bag he’s holding as well.

“I suppose dinner can wait another bit then.” He motions for the sofa and she follows him, sitting next to him. “So,” he says, handing her the flat envelope that he _hopes_ is plain enough to disclose what’s inside, “I realize that I went and bought this without asking you first, so we _can_ change things around.”

“Now I’m terrified,” she quips back, opening the envelope with those long, rough fingers of hers. And then her eyes go wide and her mouth parts as she sees the two tickets for Paris (one week, round trip) that he bought on New Year’s Eve while she was passed out in his bed and he _knew_ that if he ever thought he’d never find the woman he’d want to put padlocks on the fucking Point des Arts with, then he was wrong.

“They’re for the end of May because I’ve been told it’s warm but not _too_ much,” he says quickly, “but if you want to go some other time they’re flexible. Or if it’s too cliché or whatever the hell else we can go somewhere else, it’s fine,” he rants, suddenly wondering if maybe he didn’t exaggerate or if it wasn’t too much, but a moment later her hand lands on his and she threads her fingers through his, shaking her head.

“It’s perfect,” she says, and she sounds like she’s about to cry. “Jaime, for — you bought tickets to _Paris_ , and I should be here complaining? May it’s great, I’ll see to take vacation time then.” She squeezes his fingers, and then hands over her package. “Now mine will probably seem lackluster, but —”

“Brienne, the flowers would have been fine,” he interrupts her, and takes the package from the bag. It’s from that bookshop she always goes to and that she went to all the time in uni, the one that also sells a lot of rare editions and so on. He doesn’t know what she might have gotten _him_ there because it’s not as if he doesn’t buy whatever books he wants and she knows it, but he tears away the paper, eager to find out —

And he’s glad he wasn’t standing because otherwise he’d have let it fall on the ground.

“Holy _fuck_ ,” he asks, “ _how_ did you know?” He _certainly_ told her that his interest in Medieval history started when he read an extremely rare first edition of T. H. White’s _The Sword and the Stone_ that was in the family library — as in, the single version, not the revised one that ended up part of _The Once and Future King_ — and which, differently from all the others around, didn’t come in abysmally small print and was more readable than most others that he tried (he didn’t know he was dyslexic yet, not that his father ever had him tested — he only figured it out thanks to his middle school teachers). He did tell her that no, he didn’t have it anymore. But he also told her that he had an e-book and it was fine enough.

And in front of her he has one of the original editions, from the late thirties, that is… exactly the same as the one they had in the house. And what he hadn’t told her was _why_ he didn’t have it anymore.

“I asked your brother,” she answers softly. “I mean, I only wanted to know the edition and I figured he might know, and he shared some details. I’m — honestly sorry,” she says. “I mean, I guess you didn’t know _then_ , but —”

“I wish I had,” he sighs. “Maybe I’d have opened my eyes sooner.” As in: it disappeared from the house because Cersei threw it in the fireplace when they were fourteen and _he was spending too much time reading that_ according to what Tyrion told him, and he doubts he’d have lied. Considering that at fourteen he couldn’t stop rereading it because someone at his school’s counseling _finally_ took him seriously and gave him some decent advice about how to manage his reading problem, well —

Gods. Given that she ended up giving him a handjob to _console him_ when that book disappeared, he feels like vomiting all over again, same as he does whenever he thinks about _anything_ he and Cersei used to do —

He shakes his head. Well, that was _then_ and this is now, and he has to wipe at his face before he starts doing something extremely embarrassing. “How did you even find it?” He asks. “I tried a few times, but —”

“I told Mr. Harlaw to keep an eye open for it in case he came across a copy. I was hoping he would for your birthday last year but he didn’t, and Christmas didn’t work, either, but he called me a couple of weeks ago and said he found one and he’d keep it for me. He’s good at that job, you know.”

He puts the book on the coffee table, grasping at her hand again. “He is,” he agrees. “But — fuck. I wasn’t — I mean, how much did you even —”

“You bought tickets to _Paris_ and I’m his favorite customer,” Brienne says, shaking her head. “Don’t worry about _that_ now. And I mean, I — even if it cost _that much_ , I kind of wanted to go all-out, given that it’s — the first and all.”

“Guess what,” he says, moving a hand to her face. “I did, too, so I can’t fault you there, but — thank you. Really, I just —”

“Lannister, if I left you at a loss for words, you can make it up in other ways.”

Maybe he _does_ like that he’s rubbed off on her a bit, in the years they’ve known each other. He grins and kisses her once, twice, thrice, her hands going to his hips, and by the time he moves away to breathe her full lips are red and kiss-swollen and her eyes look a darker shade of blue, and he wishes he could go straight upstairs, but —

“You know,” he says, “I have food for five people in the next room. How about we eat it _and_ that cake, because excuse me but I fucking aced it, and then I can show you upstairs exactly how much I appreciated the damned flowers?”

A hint of teeth shows up as her lips curl upwards again. “I’m game,” she says, but then she leans in to kiss him again before standing up, and he follows her, without breaking it, and after he does he tells her to just sit, he’s going to bring the food over. She does, her cheeks flushed in the _good_ way, and he leaves the room to go into the kitchen.

He has to pass in front of the table with the flowers on it in order to get there, though, and when he does and he glances at them he feels like his heart has somehow grown one size. Fuck, he can’t believe she bought _primroses_ in winter because she had guessed he might have thought about actually being at the receiving end of one of those dumb, regular romantic gestures —

He runs a hand along the nearest primrose’s petals, smiling to himself, and then snatches it from the vase, puts it inside his shirt’s breast pocket and heads for the kitchen.

With these premises, they’re definitely starting this whole celebrating Valentine’s day thing with a bang, and if Cersei showed up, well, maybe it wasn’t too bad, given how much she looked like she swallowed a lemon the moment she realized _who_ was his new girlfriend.

Hopefully she caught the drift.

When he comes back with the pie and serves them both, she does notice that he put the primrose in his shirt.

“You know,” she says, “if you liked those flowers that much, I can get you some more next time. And I was joking about the roses. I mean, if you _really_ wanted them —”

“Brienne,” he interrupts her. “I _punched_ that asshole in the face and someone actually _did_ try to show me me that video he put on YouTube. I said I didn’t want to watch it, they about pressed play anyway and I lasted exactly twenty seconds. Given what I did see, which was pretty much almost none of it, I think I get why you don’t want reminders of that piece of shit, so _no_ , I’ll skip on the roses. But any other one? That’d be nice.”

“Fine,” she smiles, her fork going to her food. “It’s a deal then. Also, this is _good_ ,” she says.

“As if anyone would doubt.”

“Please, the first time you cooked pasta it _burned_. But you learned,” she winks, and then she grabs another forkful.

Well, yeah. She also doesn’t know that before then the most of his experience in a kitchen was heating pre-paid food because somehow whoever his father hired to worry about their dinner cooked stuff that Tyrion hated and so he hate half of what they did unless he took care of it, which is in hindsight _extremely fucking sad_ , but he did learn (and Cersei didn’t, too bad for her), and now that Brienne is about making appreciative noises at it while candlelight makes those freckles on her cheeks pop in the best way, he decides that for being both their _first_ serious Valentine’s day, they aren’t doing half bad.

When her fingers grasp his on the table, he doesn’t even try to move them away.

 

 

End.


End file.
